The Great Pumpkin Beer List: The Best and Worst Pumpkin Ales

There isn’t a seasonal beer style more ubiquitous than pumpkin ale—it’s the defining “seasonal” of the American craft beer market, and likely what a lot of folks on the street would mention first when told to name a “seasonal beer.” Few flavors go into the vogue so hard and during such a limited period of time, but if you survey brewers, you’ll typically find them ambivalent on the subject. Some truly love a well-made pumpkin beer. Others only make them at this point because the customer base expects (and demands) a slew of pumpkin-flavored brews every fall.

Perhaps it’s because of this obligation that we’ve seen more and more attempts at expanding the pumpkin beer category in recent years, as brewers think outside the box for ways to work the word “pumpkin” into a fall lineup in unique ways. It’s not all about the cut-and-dry “pumpkin ale” anymore—in 2014, you’re likely to find just as many pumpkin imperial stouts, pumpkin sours, Belgian pumpkin ales and barrel-aged pumpkin brews. And we here at Paste tasted them all.

Yes, in our 4th Annual Pumpkin Tasting, we had more beers than ever before. Good, bad and middling, we tried 25 different pumpkin ales, and ranked them from worst to best, including 15 from last year’s tasting that we didn’t repeat. Some of last year’s beers that we re-tasted made incredible leaps as they gained new appreciation among our tasters. Others slipped down from their high spots. Here we countdown from the worst to the best pumpkin beers we could find. Let us know which ones we’ve still somehow missed in the comments below.

45. Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat City: St. Louis ABV: 5.2% Tastes like: Budweiser made it. Pumpkin flavor: Low Spiciness: Low Perfect for: Putting out the fire of your jack-o-lantern The verdict: Q: What do American macrobrews and making love in a canoe have in common? A: They’re both f—-ing close to water.

44. Southern Tier Imperial Pumking City: Lakewood, N.Y. ABV: 8.6% Tastes like: Candy Corn Pumpkin flavor: Very high Spiciness: Medium Perfect for: Handing out to adult trick-or-treaters The verdict: This is one of the most divisive beers we’ve come across. Though one of our judges thought this was the best of the bunch, several named it the worst. I guess it depends on whether you like beer that tastes like a bag of candy corn was simply melted into the batch. Even the mouthfeel is a little like drinking a candle. As one of our tasters put it: “You never go full pumpkin.”

43. Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale City: Boonville, Calif. ABV: 6% Tastes like: Pumpkin juice Pumpkin flavor: Medium Spiciness: Low Perfect for: When you’re so thirsty you don’t care what your beer tastes like. The verdict: The only real flavor coming through is the pumpkin sweetness, but even that doesn’t hit you very hard in this bland entry from a promising brewery.

42. Shipyard Pumpkinhead City: Portland, Maine ABV: 5.1% Tastes like: Cinnamon Pumpkin flavor: Medium Spiciness: Very high Perfect for: Making gingerbread men The verdict: The lightest colored beer of the bunch has an overpowering cinnamon flavor that overshadows other notes like pumpkin…and beer.

39. Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin City: Portland, Maine ABV: 9% Tastes like: Someone spiked the pumpkin ale Pumpkin flavor: Very high Spiciness: High Perfect for: Late-night Halloween pranks The verdict: The booziest of the bunch unfortunately wasn’t one of the best. Like Southern Tier, the idea here seems to be Maximum Pumpkin Overdrive and only works if you love pumpkins even more than you love beer.

37. Lakefront Pumpkin Lager Beer City: Milwaukee, Wis. ABV: 6% Tastes like: Drinking Bud out of a hollowed out pumpkin Pumpkin flavor: Very High Spiciness: Medium Perfect for: People who love redundancy The verdict: This “lager beer” definitely doesn’t skimp on the pumpkin but that didn’t turn out to be a great thing.

36. Bluepoint Pumpkin Ale City: Patchogue, N.Y. ABV: 6% Tastes like: A solid beer Pumpkin flavor: Low Spiciness: Medium Perfect for: An unseasonably early snowfall. The verdict: Last year we were unimpressed by Bluepoint’s pumpkin beer, but it faired a little better this year—either the beer or our tastebuds must have improved.

34. Hoppin’ Frog Double Pumpkin Ale City: Akron, Ohio ABV: 8.4% Tastes like: Pumpkin pie Pumpkin flavor: Medium Spiciness: Very high Perfect for: Spiking the eggnog The verdict: The nutmeg hits you before you even take a sip. The spices almost hide the flavor of the pumpkin. Not the best balanced, but undeniably flavorful. It’s the first beer I’ve tasted that begged for a scoop of Cool Whip on top.

33. Uinta Punk’N City: Salt Lake City ABV: 4% Tastes like: Something out of Harry Potter Pumpkin flavor: High Spiciness: Medium Perfect for: Serving at The Three Broomsticks The verdict: Very strange flavor that split the jury, with some praising the unique spices and one proclaiming, “I’d only drink this Punk’N if I was more Drunk’N.”

32. Harpoon Pumpkin UFO City: Boston ABV: 5.9% Tastes like: It just came out of the oven Pumpkin flavor: Medium Spiciness: Low Perfect for: Making sure First Contact is a friendly affair. The verdict: This unfiltered ale smells like pumpkin bread with mild but tasty pumpkin and spice notes.